connor baird will not (gotothesea) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-10-25 10:13:00 |
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Entry tags: | thane krios |
Who: Connor Baird
What: Connor questions a suspect, and gets a new alter.
Where: LVPD
When: Recently
Warnings/Rating: Mild violence, mentions of kidnapping and murder.
Recently, Connor had been having unusual dreams. Unusual, in fact, might have been too mild. They had crawled inside his mind like spiders, insinuated themselves their, scuttling to the surfaces at the strangest moments. They felt uncomfortable, but familiar, an old coat that didn't quite fit, dreams about travel and creatures that walked and talked like humans but looked nothing like them at all. Dreams about killing.
He'd also noticed that the boy in his head had become quiet. No talking, nothing at all.
Late one Saturday night, he sat at his desk at LVPD, the one they'd been kind enough to set aside for his use considering the sheer amount of time he spent there. A set of files was spread out in front of him, painting a timeline from left to right about the actions of a local small-time crime kingpin. He traced it with his fingers, his hand hovering over the folders. This one a murder - up and to the right - that one an extortion that ended in a brutal beating. Down and to the right - a thick file on the suspect's loan sharking activities.
Up and to the right again sat the file that had put all the rest into line. A little girl had gone missing last week. An amber alert had turned up nothing, and while everyone was still out looking for the child, the primary suspect had already been named internally: a small time crime kingpin, with a history of suspected murder and extortion, who the father of the girl claimed had been pressing him for money over some alleged blackmail photos.
Well, clearly this man, Morelli, hadn't really had anything to blackmail with if he was kidnapping children to get his money, and odds were that the kidnapping itself had been unplanned. Even the stupidest of criminals tended to think twice about taking a child as leverage, these days, considering the amount of publicity and police it stirred up, a solid thwack to the hornet's nest that the criminal element would much prefer to move quietly around without disturbing. They were bringing Morelli in within the hour, and Connor had the honor of being the first to question him. He was organized crime, after all, and going after him for his other criminal activities could lead to a plea bargain that got them the girl's location, or, better yet, scare him into revealing which of his men had crossed the line to save his own skin. It might not them the slightly larger fish, in the end, but the girl was the priority.
Connor had seen her picture in the newspaper the week before. The morning after she went missing, they ran a year old photo of her outside in her backyard, alongside a photo taken the day she went missing across the street from the house. In the photo of the house, the police were rough black shapes as they moved in and out, and the forensics investigators were white smudges behind yellow tape as they surveyed the place for evidence. In the photo from a year ago, a little girl with blonde hair and braces smiled for the camera, hands clasped behind her back, cheeks pulled wide in the rictus smile of a child who just wants mommy to get it over with so she can go back to playing.
He had the picture in his pocket. He'd clipped it out and slipped it in there, after looking at it for a while.
Sympathy wasn't an emotion Connor was well acquainted with. He knew how to pretend at its existence, knew what it looked like on the faces of others, and knew it was something he ought to feel if he wasn't cruel. But he felt it a bit more...abstractly than was the norm. When someone lost their job, or went through a petty misfortune, Connor made the right sounds and pretended that was a shame. When someone's child was kidnapped and he read the mother's heartfelt words of grief in the paper, logic often cut across any sympathy he might feel. The girl wasn't confirmed dead yet. She might be, and it was likely that she was, considering they hadn't found her after a week, but the mother didn't know for sure. She ought to hope instead of despair, at least for a while longer. If they found her daughter's crumpled, damaged corpse, then she could weep, and then Connor would feel some vague tugging of understanding. Pity was a difficult emotion for him to parse, but he would then feel the hollow space where a child had been, and know what that couple's life was destined to be, always looking over their shoulders for a small, missing shape in their lives. He would feel something then, because such things should not be allowed to happen.
For the little girl, though, Connor could feel sympathy. For the victims, he didn't find it very difficult at all. That was if one could call it sympathy, anyway. He felt anger on their behalf, and something akin to what a normal person might call compassion. Pity was too small a word. When he found a victim, and he worked their cases, he was them. He was every choice they were never able to make, every punishing blow they were denied the right to strike. He was their lost lives, their feelings of never being the same again.
They brought in the suspect well after midnight. He'd been out at a club, apparently, because he was still dressed sharply, but his suit was rumpled. He stank of sweat, cologne, whiskey and a woman's perfume. Connor watched him pass by on his way to the interrogation room, and wondered what he thought he had the right to celebrate.
He tidied up the folders on the desk into a small pile, picking up the case file about the girl and sliding it inside one of the files on the man's extortion racket.
The interrogation did not go quite as planned.
From the beginning, it was clear that Morelli was afraid. He had sobered up, but he was still sweating the alcohol from his pores, his thin dress shirt sticking to his skin at the cuffs and the neck, dragging along as he moved, reluctant to follow from where it had been plastered in place. He knew what had happened, and he'd been waiting to be brought in for questioning.
Connor approached the subject gently, beginning with the extortion racket. He offered the evidence they had on which they could now convict him, the witnesses now willing to testify. In one particular case, there was even someone willing to stand in court and say that their children had been threatened.
Morelli twitched. Connor kept a close eye on him. Desperate, panicky men often did very stupid things, Connor pointed out. Sometimes those men also acted without the approval of their superiors, but those same superiors had a duty to report their actions, lest they get into trouble themselves. Years of trouble. Prison, for instance.
It was hardly the most inflammatory of statements by Connor's reckoning, but Morelli leapt across the table, something silvery and sharp in his right hand.
What happened next was so quick, so smooth, and so unexpected that Connor didn't have time to process it until it was already done. Surprise that Morelli had a knife despite being searched, and that he'd been stupid enough to try to use it (and, what, run through a room outside of dozens of police officers in a bid to escape?) disappeared. He didn't think. He turned to the side, grabbed Morelli by his extended arm, and pulled him sharply across the table. Morelli was left beached on his stomach, his flailing legs kicking his chair away as Connor twisted his arm, forcing him to drop the knife. Then he yanked him straight across the table, sending him face-first into the floor. He spun and planted his foot firmly against the back of his neck, hard enough to force Morelli's face to the side, immobilizing him. A few pounds of extra pressure, Connor knew, and Morelli would be dead, his neck fractured places. Humans had fragile skeletons and practically exposed spinal connections.
"Stay still," he said, unthinking. He didn't recognize his own tone, hard, but gently chiding.
The whole thing had happened in less than a few seconds, and when the door burst open and several officers came in to offer assistance, it took a moment for Connor's eyes to clear, and for him to realize that something had, indeed, happened. Someone kicked Morelli's knife away, and one of the officers gave him a long, incredulous look. Someone clapped him on the back for performing so well under pressure. "Moved like a goddamn snake," said one of the incredulous officers who had been observing. The man pushed him back, and Connor stepped off Morelli, looking down at him. The officers picked him up. He'd broken his nose when he slammed into the floor, and through the blood running to his mouth, he was babbling about one of his underlings, someone who'd gone off the rails, gone a step too far, and it was just one fucking kid but the town had blown up like it was goddamn mardi gras.
Someone began taking note of all the extra charges they would be able to level against Morelli for attacking the police officer, and recording his statement as he spoke for all the department to hear. Connor looked down, and, finding one of his cuffs had come undone, rebuttoned it. Someone asked him if he was hurt, and in his haze, he assured them he was fine, picked up his file, and dropped it off at his desk.
There would be paperwork to do, but it could wait until the morning. A few minutes later, he was outside on the front steps, taking a long breath of the warm, dry air. It was strangely comforting.
Connor could fight, yes. He could more than handle himself. But that display in there was nothing he was capable of. His instinct would have been to take Morelli by that stabbing wrist, disarm, possibly stun him with a punch to the face, then pull his gun to keep him in place. What he had done had been smooth, practiced, like he'd already done it a thousand times and would do it again a thousand more.
He felt inside his pocket, pulling out the roughly clipped picture of the little girl. As Morelli was being dragged out, Connor hadn't heard him say anything about where the girl was being held, or who had her now. That didn't bode well for the bright smile in the photo, for the girl who just wanted to get back to playing.
In his mind, there was a low rumble of sorrowful words. my son was that age once. Then a series of images, impossibly clear - a small child with dark eyes, running around corners and then peeking out, playing hide and go seek with his father.
The smile was recognizable enough, but the child's face was not. It wasn't even human.
Connor took another breath, then walked down the steps, hands back in his pockets again. Tomorrow. This, and the paperwork, could wait.